IGN: Thirteene by no means an expert, but I am level 40 with 3 6* and 14 5*. I may not know everything about Summoners War, but I can at least start you off on the right path. I have got a couple RL friends into this game and know what people should be learning and how to help guide them along. Below is a shorthand guide of what I learned 1-40 and am willing to add anything the community can contribute if it is helpful.

BASICS (NEWBS)

A couple things people look over worth knowing or dont figure out till mid game:

You do not need to tap drops to collect them

If you want to skill up for monsters, feed them another monster of the same type (feed any fairy to another fairy to randomly level up a skill)

Crystals are rare and valuable. Do not waste them on anything you can.

Add friends soon. Post in chat you are adding people for friends for social points. You can finish your daily quests and get help from powerful monsters and free summons.

Auto play is your best friend. You can tap a monster to focus it.

DO NOT collect non daily rewards until you are close to leveling. You will be placed against higher level opponents in the arena, and if you level prematurely you lose free energy refills when you level.

TEAM COMPS

Summoners War meta game has evolved a few viable team comps considering how detailed and advanced the game is. The comp you chose is dependant on your play style, but more importantly the monsters that you end up getting.

SPEED DEBUFF

This is my current team setup. The idea is you get a fast team that controls the opponents and wins through multiple weak attacks or damaging debuffs. Core setup includes a leader that gives speed to the team, multiple support players to stay alive and buff your team, and usually 1 damager that deals continuous damage or hits really hard. Examples include: Sylphid, Sylph, Raksasha

TANK

As the name suggests this team outlasts the others with strong characters. Most of these characters include skills based on hp% and a few monsters that heal to ensure they stay alive. Examples include Death Knight, Bearman, Warbear

SUSTAIN

The goal is to stay alive and slowly kill the opponent by sheer number and time. Primary Team includes: Bernard, Ahman, Darion, Shannon Another take on this is a Resurrection team that heals and uses the extra turns to ensure they can revive anyone that happens to die.

Everyone gets the same 3 starting monsters, but after that it is random. It can seem overwhelming at first, but as a general rule if you focus on these easy to get monsters the game will progress much smoother. The following are NOT ranked in order.

Sieq (Fire Hellhound) – Starting monster, he is not great late game, but he is a garenteed drop and buffs the team with attack.

Ramagos (Wind Warbear) – Nicknamed Ramagod because he can be a primary monster till mid-late game.

Lulu (Water Howl) – Easy to get healer. Has dispels and can keep your team alive.

Ceres (Fire Amazon) – Gives your team speed as leader skill. Speed is arguably the best stat in the game. Used Early Game.

Shannon (Wind Pixie) – Used until late game. Amazing buffs and debuffs. You should be using her.

If you have already beat Faimon and gotten your light dark scroll, it may be worth considering restarting the game. Light dark scrolls are rare, and you earn crystals fairly quickly in the early game, so if you think you have terrible monsters it may be worth looking at restarting. If not consider doing these next:

Awaken your monster. The difference between an awakened monster and a non awakened is massive. Element dungeons come once a week, and once a month all are open for a couple days. If you pulled an amazing monster, get farming.

Runes! Below is a list of need to know about runes. Start farming specific slots or giants because this will power up your team immensely.

##Light Secret Dungeon Farming

Darion (Light Vegabond) – Reduces teammate damage by 15% will be used late game.

Neal (Light Fairy) – Mid game, not the best healer but the invulnerable shield is required on some fights.

Ahman – Better the later the game gets, Ahman is extremely useful with aoe team heals.

As soon as you can start running Faimon 1 over and over again and when you get a fire inugami, start leveling it. This is an amazing place to farm experience and the inugami can solo it later in the game.

RUNES

Runes wil greatly power your monsters, this can get insanely complicated so I will stick to the basics. Each monster has its own required stats and these are available in any of the monster guides in the sidebar so I will not include them.

Slots 1/3/5 are set primary stat; these will never change. When buying runes in slots 1/3/5 the smaller stats below are what is important. The important stats are % based with the exception of speed (there is no speed%).

Slots 2/4/6 on the other hand can have varying stats and the Primary is the important stat. Slot 2 has the unique ability to be Speed, extremely valuable especially on swift runes. Slot 4 can have Crit Chance, good on violent and blade; and Crit Damage, good on blade, fatal, and rage. Slot 6 can have resistance (useless) and accuracy which is great on despair, focus and energy.

TLDR of buying runes is that if slots 1/3/5 does not have GREAT % based substats it is not worth buying and slots 2/4/6 is not applicable to one of your monsters it is most likely not worth it.

MONSTER SUMMARY

Instead of spamming in chat if a monster is viable, or getting a confusing outdated chart with roles and rankings, I am to make this a list of monsters and an explanation of their role and required stats. This comes from experience by owning, using a friends, 2nd hand experience or daily discussion. I am sure anything wrong will be corrected in comments. Anything not mentioned is food! (except some light or dark I have heard nothing about)

2 STAR

Imp – Light Imp has some usefulness, nothing worth pursuing

Pixie – Wind Pixie is Amazing, get her build speed hp% with accuracy despair or swift. Light Pixie is used in revive teams to get 1-2 revives

Yeti – Wind Yeti is an early game healer

Hellhound – fire is a great starter monster, and is used to buff crit for monsters like ahman and rakshasas. Too squishy to be used late game.

Warbear – Wind is great early-midish late build HP%. Water is used for slow farming and arena defense build HP%

Elemental – Dark has a unique ability that can be used in manual build crit %

Garuda – Water is a strong healer with AOE debuff removal. Used in a higher TOA floor and in place of some hard to get natural 4*. Light is useful until mid game and is replaced.

Harpu

Salamander – Dark is immune to most common PVP stuns and can be used in high level giants

Viking – Fire is niche at stealing buffs in high level dragons

Howl – Water is a strong early game healer and light is a strong mid game healer.

Vegabond – Light is used late game as sustain very flexible, build hp% possibly with Violent.

3 STAR

Fairy – Light is useful in niche situations, build speed and attack for more frequent shields, and more powerful heals

Mystic Witch – Water is an Arena God, provides buffs and attack bar fill and removes an enemy buff build as much speed as possible so your team gets first hit in arena.

Epsilon Priest – Fire is a beast, useful with tank teams to kill speed teams. Water is used in arena defense to upset people, and used to grind high level areas very slowly

Grim Reaper – Fire can be used as one of the fastest Faimon grinders in game. Hard to build and expensive.

Living Armor – Fire can be a TOA Tank, Wind is strong late game with godly runes.

Drunken Master

Minatarous

Lizardman

4 STAR

9 Tailed Fox – Water with high accuracy has a high chance to CC on first skill and an aoe buff remover.

Undine – AOE Immunity, Niche but required.

Sylph – Fire is fusion, great for any player, spreads continuous damage and gives speed leader. Water is one of the strongest units in game with an AOE freeze and aoe glancing hits, build swift or despair with accuracy and speed. Wind is strong as support and a damage dealer.

Sylphid – Wind uses the shield for sustain and to pad group members health build speed accuracy hp% with despair.

Succubus – water is useful as a water damage dealer build fatal with crit damage%.

Joker – Wind is one of the strongest units in the game, fire can do large damage in PVE if the bombs go off but shouldnt be focused on late game.

Ninja – Wind is the strongest continuous damage dealer in game and used in dungeons

Pierret – water is a strong damage dealer for the element it is the best and most widely used, but Wind Pierret is a great single target nuker and the Fire Pierret is a great stunner with Despair.

Phantom Thief – Wind and Water are both strong damage dealers / stun machines. I don’t have personal experience.

Rakshasa fire was nerfed, but is still great at delaying boss attack bar from filling in PVE build speed and crit %. wind is an adequate continuous damage stacker for PVE and strong in PVE due to violent + passive.

Death Knight – Fire is an amazing monster and one of the few in the element capable of doing a large amount of single target and is a massive tank, build hp%. Wind is strong for revive and a wind tank.

Lich – keeps getting buffed, but as of now food for everything but wind Lich. Wind is a faster early farmer than Ramagos and uses his shield to negate crystal damage to himself.

Samurai – I have heard wind samarai is good, but I have no experience.

Honestly hope you know what to do if you have one, I haven’t pulled one yet so you are on your own!

LOOKING FORWARD

Towards the end of the game, you will want to consider buying mana from the shop. Most players get amazing runes from the shop and need a large mana supply, not to mention with the largest mana pack, mythic scrolls from the shop cost ~66 crystals instead of 75. This also allows you to upgrade runes and just be flexible with what you do with your resources.

Fusions are great for players that can not pull a natural 5 Star, but the water phoenix is only okay and is very resource and time expensive. Katarina is a strong unit, but you need to build your team around her with Chloe and Neal so fusion is something to work towards only with an idea of what you are getting into.

If anyone has comments or would like to add to this, feel free to comment or message me and I will add as time allows.

I’ve read quite a few guides, but I like this one more than most. It’s a good overall “quick hitter” guide that contains lots of the most important information. The important stuff is easy to discover. Thanks for your effort! If it’s been a while since you wrote it, I encourage you to give it an update.